Video is the in thing now.  YouTube has exploded in both the number of videos available to view and the number of viewers watching them.  FaceBook is peppered with them.  Video has higher conversion rates than many other marketing channels because users want to view content in this format.  So it has become one of the hottest trends in marketing today.  Video as a marketing tool can be quite effective for most organizations.  But video can be an especially effective tool for associations and non-profits.  An article by Paul Gannon, posted at Brightfind, explains why this is.  He lists three reasons why video may be especially well-suited for the needs of associations and their marketing efforts.

If you're a non-profit organization, you are in the business of not making profits.  So how do you do more with less and still innovate to attract and retain donors?  And what lessons can be learned from the non-profit world by everyone else?  Our partner Adestra has produced a webinar, What Can NOT Making A Profit Teach Us?-Lessons for us all from the non-profit industry, that is now available for download.  Ryan Phelan and Tristam Jones talk about non-profits and what the rest of us can learn from them. They examine case studies and give examples from non-profits.  We wanted to share the webinar with you because it delivers great data points on email benchmarking and some really good tips on how to get people to feel more emotionally attatched via email. 

Top challenges this summer are in membership

One of the key challenges that I've heard all summer surrounds membership. The two-fold challenge of how do we grow? and how can we do a better job of limiting year 1 to year 2 attrition seems to be the key focus area for many associations right now. We are spending a ton of time working with organizations to re-think this two-fold challenge and apply social marketing principles and digital marketing techniques to arrive at unique solutions. 

the secret challenges no one wants to admit

For most membership organizations, there are actually more than two problems. There is a very big elephant-in-the-room set of challenges that few organizations are comfortable discussing. Namely: 

1) How well do we currently know the consumption patterns and user behavior of our current membership?

2) How well do we really understand generational splits and tastes & preferences, cultural references and lifestyles of our membership?

3) How well are we spending the time we have to strategize on membership campaigns to help us overcome our challenges?

Our HighRoad Analyst Brief series presented in conjunction with Demand Metric continues this month with a discussion about Marketing Performance Management.  Marketing Performance Management or MPM is the management of marketing resources through the use of analytics.  By analyzing your marketing processes to see what's working and what isn't, you can improve your marketing effectiveness and increase ROI.  When marketers can prove the impact their efforts are having on increased ROI, marketing budgets increase as well as the respect for and value of your team.  Demand Metric recently conducted a study on the current state of MPM.  As this is a follow up study to their 2015 MPM study, we can now share trends found in the data.  Join us Tuesday, August 9th at 12pm ET, as Demand Metric Chief Analyst, Jerry Rackley, discusses these trends and what companies are doing to master Marketing Performance Management.

Jenny Lassi was recently interviewed by Mizz Information, herself, Maggie McGary on email marketing. Maggie recently found herself in charge of her org's email marketing program and realized it was time to bite the bullet to learn more about why email marketing is so painful. Maggie reached out to us to help her understand where the areas of the most complexity lie and why they're so tricky to navigate. 

In her article, Maggie provides a great explanation of the 5 biggest pain points and chiefareas of misunderstanding about email that association marketing professionals need to know:

1. Reputation: Email address is bouncing and/or continually being flagged as invalid/ineligible 
2. Authentication: Emails going directly to the spam folder abyss, 
3. Filter: Email getting delivered but member says they didn’t get it,
4. Feedback Loops (or FBL for those in the know): Email address mysteriously disappeared from the system, 
5. List Hygiene: Prospecting new members 

Today kicks off ASAE's Marketing, Membership & Communications Conference at the DC Convention Center. From the association technology vendor viewpoint, this has long been thought of as a low investment show. One where you have to show up, but you minimize your spend and don't make a big splash because it doesn't usually draw the technology people whom have long been the traditional buyers of software. Due to lack of big budgets and being seen as an influencer of technology purchases, but not a decision-maker, MMC professionals traditionally have not been seen as power players in the association industry. This observation is backed up by our research which found that a small margin of associations have a MMCer at the VP level and an even smaller percentage of the already small percentage have an MMCer with a title that begins with the word "Chief".